Review of Brooklyn's Finest (2010) by Jack F — 19 Jan 2011

"Brooklyn's Finest" is a gritty, compelling drama with interlocking stories about three New York cops, each of whom are being suffocated by the job in one way or the other. The director, Antoine Fuqua, previously covered this ground in "Training Day," the film that garnered Denzel Washington his Best Actor Oscar, and while this film doesn't quite have the intensity of that previous effort, it is a worthy successor.

The film is basically divided into three stories. The policemen in the stories are all at different phases of their careers. Eddie (Richard Gere) is a 20 year veteran of the force, and he's entering his last week before retirement. He's become jaded with the job over the years, and takes solace in whiskey and prostitutes. Despite his "less than exemplary" record, he is assigned the task of introducing incoming rookie officers to the beat. Then there's Tango (Don Cheadle), who is deep undercover, so deep that the line between cop and criminal is beginning to blur, and that scares him. He wants his life back, and feels he deserves a cushy deskjob after all that he's done. In order to get out, however, he'll have to turn on Caz (Wesley Snipes), a drug dealer with whom he has developed a bond during his undercover years. And finally, Sal (Ethan Hawke) is a skilled narcotics cop with great financial troubles; he desperately needs cash in order to make a down payment on a new house for his family, as the current house has mold problems that is making his asthmatic, pregnant wife (Lili Taylor) sick. This creates all sorts of ethical problems when his job involves seizing drug money on a regular basis.

As the film progresses, we get the sense that some of the characters will find redemption, while tragedy surely awaits others. The three stories eventually come to a head at a specific housing unit in the projects, as Eddie, Sal and Tango find themselves at the same location, but for very different reasons. Despite the complexity of each plotline, they actually seem to resolve themselves relatively smoothly. Amazingly, the three leads actually share very little screen time, even when their paths cross, which kind of enhances the feeling that the movie is really almost three separate--but good--movies.

All three cops are drawn out and portrayed well, and the supporting players--Snipes, Taylor, and also including reliable character actors Brian F. O'Byrne and Will Patton, amongst others--are strong too. Yes, there are instances in which it's hard not to look at them as stock character types, the kind of which we've seen in lots of other movies, but I guess that's to be expected. It actually makes the performances seem all the better when we realize that, although they're sometimes playing cliches, they can still be memorable. Hawke and Cheadle, in particular, are very effective in their roles and add some interesting dimensions to Sal and Tango, respectively. Snipes, as the drug dealer Caz, isn't exactly one note either, as we discover during the rooftop scene.

And while the film is undoubtedly a "cop movie," there are also undercurrents of something else. It's not just about these archetypical policemen types, but also about the effects the job has on them. Their work is pressuring them in different ways; Tango has been undercover for so long he's forgetting who he really is, Sal is struggling to make ends meet on his insufficient salary, and Eddie just plain wants out. There are small echoes of "The Hurt Locker" in that regard. "The Hurt Locker," you may recall, is the Oscar-winning war movie that is more about the effects of battle on a soldier's psyche than about the actual soldiers themselves.

"Brooklyn's Finest" is by no means a great film. As I mentioned above, there are cliches, and it sometimes seems overlong. Also, as with "Training Day," you kind of have to accept some rather large coincidences (e.g., the fact that all three main characters wind up in the same location at the climax). But it's a bit deeper than it may seem on the surface, and just may provoke some discussion. It's a solid film.